


Crush

by lonelywalker



Category: Fantastic Four (Movieverse)
Genre: M/M, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-19
Updated: 2011-04-19
Packaged: 2017-10-18 09:28:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/187441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Johnny keeps getting crushes on geeky guys, and asks for Reed's help. Things don't go entirely to plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crush

As far as Johnny can remember, it's always been the smart guys.

Sure, there have been plenty of dumb models in his life (although, as far as he could tell, they'd always been pretty smart when it came to checking out his bank account). That sort of thing just came with the territory, like buying the right clothes, the right bike, the right car. Cute guys hang out with cute girls. It's just the law, and always has been, right back to the early days in kindergarten when Johnny hadn't even known what the law was.

Sue thumps him in the arm occasionally, of course, as though going to a movie premiere or even just a hot dog stand with a beautiful woman was some kind of crime. "You're _objectifying_ her," she says, as if that explained everything. In Johnny's opinion, if he isn't objectifying the girl, he isn't playing his part right. She's hot. He's hot. They both know what they're getting into, both want to see their photos the next morning on Wireimage. No harm done.

When it comes to the smart guys, though. Well. Johnny could sure use some objectifying. Smart _girls_? They're easy. Not as easy as the dumb girls, because they'll give you lectures about feminism and make you wait and look interested while they do their physics homework, but at least they're up for it. The smart boys never even look in his direction.

There's this one guy, Parker, Johnny had run into once at a Broadway play while he'd been hitting on some starlet who was apparently the geek's girlfriend. Nervous, kind of pudgy looking, moped held together with sticky tape, and Johnny had fallen like a B-movie villain over tripwire.

And why? _Why_ would his brain be wired like that? Why would he want the... well, guys to start off with, but nerdy guys? Guys who were average looking at best, who couldn't get their noses out of textbooks, who actually looked down on him - him, Johnny Storm! - for being nothing more than a good-looking jock.

"Obviously it's some kind of karmic retribution for the cosmic rays," he says one day in the lab, bouncing a rubber ball off the opposite set of cabinets. "Ben gets his ass turned to granite, and it's a challenge just to get him out of bed, he's landed such a hot chick. And me? Hottest guy on the planet, and no one I like even looks at me twice."

"Uh huh," Reed refocuses his microscope.

"Am I _cursed_ or something?" Johnny asks, throwing his arms up to the heavens. "That's it. I'm cursed to be so incredibly good-looking and cool and just downright awesome that I intimidate people. No one thinks they can possibly be good enough for me."

"Mm."

Johnny rolls his eyes and gets to his feet, going to see what Reed can possibly be working on that's so important. "I mean, do _you_ get intimidated by me? Okay, you're not so completely average yourself. Sue likes you. And those stretchy powers must be kind of cool in bed, but seriously. Your middle name is Nerd. Or maybe Geek. No, Nerd is better. Anyway, yeah. So you must look at a guy like me and think you'd have absolutely no chance. I'm way out of your league. I'm playing in the World Ser- mmpppphhh."

Somehow, in all his imaginings of how this could go, he'd never thought that Reed's tongue could be quite so...

Johnny massages his jaw. Runs his tongue over his teeth to check that they're all still there. "So," he says.

Reed's bent back over his microscope, the picture of scientific discovery. "Mm?"

"Not intimidated at all, then?"

"No."

"Not even a little bit?"

"No."

"Oh."

Silence.

"You wouldn't happen to know if..."

"His number's in my Rolodex. And rumor has it his girlfriend broke up with him last week. Sue says it was all over People magazine. She used to date that Osborn boy, you know."

Johnny forces himself to play it slightly cooler than he has been, and not immediately dash for Reed's office, leaving flames in his wake. "Really. Huh." He clears his throat, looks absently at the work schedule on one wall. "So, uh, how did you...?"

"I'll have Sue show you how to clean out your Google search history," Reed says. "Ben logged on the other day, and all he could find was gay porn and timetables for physics classes at Columbia. I put two and two together."

"Right... Well. Thanks!" He gets to the door before another thought occurs to him. "You're not going to tell Sue and Ben about this, are you?"

Reed's grin might as well be stretched out, seeing how big it is. "Every word."

"Goddammit."

Self-confidence? Restored. Sexual identity? Reasonably stable. Subtlety?

Yeah. He might just have to work on that one.


End file.
